Wisconsin: "$800K for Viagra won't enhance performance inside classroom" says Lt. Gov. Kleefisch

Wisconsin Lt. Governor Rebecca Kleefisch went "On the Record" Tuesday to discuss Governor Scott Walker's Budget Repair bill and the issue of collective bargaining.

Lt. Governor Kleefisch explained that the reason public employee collective bargaining is so costly is because "you don't join together to bargain in order to ask for less. You join together to bargain, you collectively bargain in order to ask for more. And collective bargaining is a huge cost driver for us." She went on to say:

For example, through collective bargaining, there are a lot of teachers in the state of Wisconsin that are forced onto a teachers union health plan call the WEA Trust. It costs taxpayers $68 million that wouldn't be going directly into classrooms. That's money that could directly be going to helping students learn, books and desks, that type of thing.

...through the state health insurance plan, they would save that $68 million. In addition to that, through collective bargaining, Milwaukee public school teachers have actually asked taxpayers to pay for Viagra to be covered to the tune of nearly $800,000. Now, that's money that's not going to go to enhance performance inside the classroom, and that's real dollars that we're talking about through collective bargaining that we're losing.

For example, our corrections officers can call in sick to a shift, but through collective bargaining, did you know that they could actually collect overtime if they went in to do a different shift on the very same day? These are the things that are the result of collective bargaining. These are real fiscal items, and they are serious cost drivers for us.